First person third person or both

Captain Spandex on 17/6/2009 at 08:12

Quote Posted by sparhawk

I don't mind if third person is included if it is guarantueed to NOT interfere with first person, like it did in TDS.

Okay, so aside from the mild annoyance of sometimes being revealed when you 'snuck a peek' around a corner (which also occurred to a lesser extent in Thief II, for the record, and most rational human beings would argue is more realistic anyhow) how did it interfere with first-person gameplay in any way?

I played through most of the game in first person, and I don't recall ever thinking it was all that different from the previous games, aside from the game engine's graphical upgrade, and some niggling physics issues. Mounting over a box or window ledge was more fluid (although as much of a pain in the ass to get it to take hold as it ever was in the previous games). Even pressing your back up against a wall was integrated well into first-person.

Really, the only legitimate complaint was the sound issue (integrated toward the 'camera' and not around the player) and that's a simple fix. Honestly, aside from vague remarks like "It's just not right for this kind of game", I have yet to see a legitimate reason why TDS' third person breaks the first person gameplay in any way. It's a button you're never once required to push.

jay pettitt on 17/6/2009 at 08:39

Capn' Spandex, you're needed over (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1865508#post1865508) there

SubJeff on 17/6/2009 at 10:02

Spandex, you're coming across as a little bit thick now.

There are reasons that 3rd person causes problems by itself, and reasons that TDS implemented 3rd person in an even worse way than that.

For plain 3rd person, when implemented properly:
1. Levels need designing to accommodate the camera so its hard getting nice claustrophobic tunnels and so on.
2. There is that cheating by looking around the corner that is much worse in 3rd person than it ever could be with lean.
3. Lighting has to take the character model into consideration. This is not practical from a fun gameplay POV as I should only have to rely on the lightgem.
4. Extra work has to go into animations and implementation of 3rd person - work that could be put in elsewhere.

And further things that TDS messed up.

5. Movement was "lurchy".
6. Lean/sidestep was messed up.

There are other things that I can't be bothered to look up. See the above post and link for more.

New Horizon on 17/6/2009 at 12:43

Quote Posted by Captain Spandex

I have yet to see a legitimate reason why TDS' third person breaks the first person gameplay in any way.

I have yet to see a legitimate reason why anyone here needs to justify a damned reason for not wanting third person in a game that was originally conceptualized, created and executed as the "First Person Sneaker".

thisisnonsense on 17/6/2009 at 14:59

Quote Posted by Captain Spandex

I have yet to see a legitimate reason why TDS' third person breaks the first person gameplay in any way. It's a button you're never once required to push.

Well, all this anticipation moved me to reinstall Thief 3 (which I must finish some day :erm:). The akward rotating motion as your body shifts when you stop, look and then move in another direction makes me feel sick!

I'd previously wondered if this was partly due to the slow frame rates I could achieve back then, but here we are, 1680*1050, rock solid 60Hz, and it's still pass the barf bag time.

Captain Spandex on 17/6/2009 at 23:10

Subjective, a few things:

#1 - Odd that you would say Deadly Shadows had too few constrained, claustrophobic environments, whereas one of the main complaints levelled at the game was that its environments were too small and had to be separated by loading times.

I can only say that I, personally, felt very claustrophobic in the Shalebridge Cradle, for instance, and the addition of third person didn't hinder my enjoyment of it in any way. The addition of Garrett's hands while picking locks, and my ability to turn to the side to look for enemies, though, certainly enhanced my fear. As I would be furiously picking the door, turn my head only to see lights around the corner begin to flicker.

#2 - Again, I played Thief on release. I consider it my favorite video game series, but even saying that, there is no reason to dismiss third-person when it's not only been used by Stealth games that run smoother (and sell millions more copies) than Thief, it's been used exclusively to even greater effect. To cram your fingers in your ears, citing ridiculous minutiae like 'lurchy' movement or 'awkward torso rotation' - all simple things, that given a few more months of development, Thief: Deadly Shadows invariably would have fixed - is to sequester your own opinion from relevance entirely. Particularly given this console and PC generation's technical advantages.

#3 - Citing such issues as being irreconcilable, when anyone on this board who has played any other stealth game in third-person knows that they are not common game flaws in third-person stealth games, is just another way of living in your own la-la land. A land where rehashing identical gameplay and robotic movements from a game created over a decade ago in the vain belief that Thief I and II are the pinnacle of stealth gameplay won't turn Thief IV into a broken mess that gets universally panned by everyone but a handful of people on here who - in truth - just want to mod THief I and II eternally, sequels be damned.

#4 - Lighting was superior in Deadly Shadows. I'm really failing to see your point, there. Of all the things to attach your argument to, 'lighting has to take third-person into account?' That's essentially another way of saying 'we can thank Deadly Shadows for improving the lighting engine so dramatically.' The game was released five years ago, and its lighting is still praised to this day.

#5 - Arguing that 'extra work' would somehow be wasted by putting time into character animations is ridiculous. One of Thief I and II's most prominent faults was animation. When enemies die, they all crumple to the side with the same recycled animation, and when you drop them on the ground, it's like setting a wooden plank on the ground, there's no physics whatsoever. Either way, this game is going to have to make up for the myriad ways in which The Dark Project and Metal Age failed with regard to animation. So if third-person facilitated that work being done, how could that even possibly be a negative thing?

Platinumoxicity on 18/6/2009 at 13:02

Quote Posted by Captain Spandex

#3 - Citing such issues as being irreconcilable, when anyone on this board who has played any other stealth game in third-person knows that they are not common game flaws in third-person stealth games, is just another way of living in your own la-la land. A land where rehashing identical gameplay and robotic movements from a game created over a decade ago in the vain belief that Thief I and II are the pinnacle of stealth gameplay won't turn Thief IV into a broken mess that gets universally panned by everyone but a handful of people on here who - in truth - just want to mod THief I and II eternally, sequels be damned.

#5 - Arguing that 'extra work' would somehow be wasted by putting time into character animations is ridiculous. One of Thief I and II's most prominent faults was animation. When enemies die, they all crumple to the side with the same recycled animation, and when you drop them on the ground, it's like setting a wooden plank on the ground, there's no physics whatsoever. Either way, this game is going to have to make up for the myriad ways in which The Dark Project and Metal Age failed with regard to animation. So if third-person facilitated that work being done, how could that even possibly be a negative thing?

-There was nothing good that came with the 3rd person option in TDS. Nothing. It didn't make the game better in any way whatsoever. When someone can mention 1 thing that the adding of 3rd person mode made better in the game, I will believe that it wasn't total waste of time. Actually, if that's too hard, try to even mention 1 thing that came with 3rd person mode that didn't make the game worse. (No, 3rd person mode is not an answer to that.)

-The Dark engine was made way before the year 2000, when realistic physics engines were just starting to get implemented to games, so ragdoll physics were not possible for a long time. Actually, I admit that I spent hours goofing around in TDS's Havok(tm) physics because that was my first game that had it. :) But the animations in T1 and T2 were in fact mo-cap'd. The movements were natural, because they were recorded using real human beings. The TDS were made manually. The animations were jerky and buggy. Also TDS didn't have dying animations at all, but back then the technology to combine correctly dying animations and ragdoll corpses was not exactly complete. Today, realistic death animations that transfer flawlessly to ragdoll are possible. See Left 4 Dead for example.

belboz on 18/6/2009 at 13:41

in third person Garrett walks like he's got a spanner rammed up his arse.

Dia on 18/6/2009 at 13:49

Quote Posted by Platinumoxicity

I've read that the reason there were no rope arrows and that Garrett couldn't swim in TDS was because the devs couldn't incorporate those things into the 3rd person mode. I remember while initially playing TDS in the 1st person I thought it felt as though I was actually playing in the 3rd person at times; just the overall feel of the character's movements. I couldn't figure out why the devs couldn't incorporate swimming into the 3rd person mode because there are other games (played in the 3rd person) wherein the characters have the ability to swim. Such as Tomb Raider, for example.

I tried playing TDS in 3rd person mode & for me it was frustrating, to say the least. Probably because I have played other games that were 3rd person POV which were interchangeable (at times) with 1st person POV and they were all done in a more satisfactory and smoother manner than was done in TDS. It felt as though too much compromizing had been done with both modes in TDS, which seriously affected the overall gameplay. Just mho, mind you.

I agree with Platinum; I can't cite one way in which adding 3rd person mode to TDS made the game better. And I seriously hope that EM doesn't make that particular mistake again.

@belboz: :laff: (and I absolutely agree!) :cheeky:

jay pettitt on 18/6/2009 at 14:35

Quote Posted by Cap'n Spandex

Stuff

Clearly you can make games with a 3rd person perspective - people do and apparently some of them are quite fun. That's not the point. The point is whether it's desirable to attempt to make Thi4f a game that can seamlessly transmission between 1st person and 3rd person (or ditch 1st person). Deadly shadows tried, but it wasn't seamless. Both 1st person and 3rd person views were compromised - and lots of us seem to think they were compromised too far. The question is can those compromises be reconciled at all, and if so - in a world of finite resources - is it worth trying. Most people here seem pretty sold on the merits of 1st Person.

Oh and Subjective Effect's argument about extra work was that creating cool looking and coherent movements for your character in addition to all the other character animations was non-trivial - not that improving animation and movement was always wasted. I think it's unlikely that you'd want to share Garrett's animation with Guards.

And his argument about lighting wasn't about rendering or aesthetic quality so much as about stealth. When developing a first person game you can employ a fudge - the light gem only barely approximates the visibility of Garrett, I think it works by noting how lit a single point on the floor where Garrett's feet are (if he had some) - which is pretty cheap in terms of processor cycles and works well as a ludic system (you can follow shadows cast on the floor and remain confidently hidden). With 3rd person that won't wash because you can actually see Garrett (all of him) and you get a better idea of what guards can see too. In Deadly Shadows the light gem was frequently at odds with Garrett's model. Basically you're looking at wanting a per pixel stealth system that takes into account where guards are too. A robust light and shadow stealth system for 3rd person will likely be expensive in terms of processor cycles and less forgiving (read fun) in ludic terms. - Not to say it can't be done or you couldn't put up with it being a bit dodgy, but making a really good job of it wouldn't be a cheap addition to a first person system.

The Universal lighting renderer in Deadly Shadows was not employed because the game had a 3rd person option. You might argue that a stealth system that takes into account all of Garrett's person was an improvement - but it might also make keeping hid unentertainingly difficult/restrictive - in which case it would be of dubious benefit.

Deadly Shadows switches to first person mode when you enter a tight, narrow environment (I think SE was referring to physically small environments like drains and crawlspaces rather than creating a sense of oppressiveness in a larger environment). It's not a spectacular argument either way - but it's one less thing to develop if you're developing a first person game.

I'll give you that some of Garrett's movement issues may be unique to Deadly Shadows and that 3rd person games can have good movement. However I suspect that reconciling the differences between 1st person movement and 3rd person movement is not as easy as you think it is. Especially when you consider complex character and environment interactions like combat and climbing and such and especially if you want to maintain the (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1856868#post1856868) freedom of exploration that Thief 1 and 2 had.

The reason for dismissing 3rd person is that Thief is a first person game. The burdon of proof is really on you to to convince the entire world and his dog that 3rd person is superior and 1st person should be ditched or that 1st person and 3rd person can coexist harmoniously. You have the stage.

I note that you didn't respond to anything in the link I thoughtfully provided.

Anyways, yes, we've noted you're a bit contrary and you really want a third person game. Good luck with that - I'm sure it will be great.

Quote:

in third person Garrett walks like he's got a spanner rammed up his arse.

That's true in first person too, it just doesn't show.